Republicans in Congress have been aiming to slash food stamps for years, and Donald Trump has seemed to be on board. So this was a little bit of a surprise:
“As far as I’m concerned we have no proposed changes” to the food stamps program, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue told congressmen last Wednesday. “You don’t try to fix things that aren’t broken.”
Well, as far as Sonny Perdue is concerned doesn’t go very far, as it turns out. Alan Pyke reports on a leaked Trump budget document that, he notes, is missing many details that would make the picture clearer. But some things are clear enough:
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) would be cut by more than a billion dollars — from about $6.3 billion budgeted for the current fiscal year to just $5.2 billion for the next.
SNAP would lose some $8 billion according to the figures listed in the document, a nearly 10 percent cut to a program that’s already seen benefit amounts drop precipitously for vulnerable families thanks to Obama-era panic about deficits.
Which is it going to be? As far as Sonny Perdue is concerned, or as far as the budget leaks are concerned? The smart money is on the one that’s in line with everything we’ve seen of Republican policy in recent years. (That’s the one where people go hungry, in case you were wondering.)